Of Balls

Sure, it only costs NT$250, but for that price it's a pretty decent wine.

While finishing off a bottle of inexpensive but good wine with Brendan last night, I got to thinking about all the usual stuff: you know, how great married life has been for the past year and a half, how lucky we really are to have such a strong relationship, and my doesn't this apartment look awesome, I could actually stay in most nights and not feel bored and hmm, if Tsai wins the election, will she be the sort of women's rights advocate in office that could really benefit Taiwanese women? and I should really read Shantaram, it's been on the shelf for a year and it's too bad that I love my career, really get on with my students, and yet am not happy with my company and it'll be a few months yet before I can make a change.


And then this: it's been five years. I'm applying for permanent residency after Chinese New Year. Would I have stayed this long if I'd been single.


No, probably not. 


Why is that?


Of course, I covered this in Why Are There So Few Expat Women in Asia?, but it kind of got buried deep in the (admittedly long) post, and wasn't very personal. This post is my attempt to personalize that a bit.

I'd said there that a lot of expat women leave after a few years if they're single, because it's just plain harder to date (whereas in some regards it's easier for expat men), even if you like the local guys - which, for the record, I would if I were single.  Married or enrelationshipped women - yes, I made that word up - seem more likely to stick around in the foreign country they've chosen - especially in Asia. It's been my experience in Taiwan that the long-term expat women I know here are all married or in relationships.  In Turkey I noticed that it was quite a different tale: plenty of expat women stuck around, and more than a few married Turkish men, not unlike a lot of the expat men in east Asia.

Clearly, when the dating market opens up to reveal more opportunities, the women tend to stay just as long as the men. I'd like to think that a choice to move abroad or move home is one made individually, for reasons other than romantic prospects but rather for reasons ranging from desire to see the world, to learn a new language, to engage in another culture, for other academic pursuits or because you genuinely enjoy English teaching and the best opportunities for that happen to be in non-English speaking countries.

And it's true that I moved abroad without worrying about romantic prospects, and I happened to get lucky (heh heh). I wasn't here to date - I was here to see more of the world and learn Chinese. I didn't even know yet that I wanted to be a career teacher/trainer/whatever it is that I do because on any given day my job description feels different.

Yet these noble ideas - that one should make these choices without thought to dating - just isn't the case, and it wouldn't have been for me, either.

If Brendan hadn't existed, or we'd never met, or our relationship never worked out, here's what would have likely happened:

Brendan moved to Taiwan about halfway through my first year in Taiwan. I was not planning to leave at the end of that year; at the time my plans were to stay for 2-3 years depending, see if teaching was a good career fit (I'd started to love my evening teaching job back in the USA and hate my corporate desk job, which clued me into the idea that I would do better in a career such as teaching) and then either move home or move to another country.  I knew before Brendan came that I would not stay at Kojen past my initial contract, so I would have still changed jobs. I might not have ended up at the company I did - although who knows? They were looking at just about the right time.

I probably would have stayed in my tiny, slightly crummy room in an otherwise nice apartment in Liuzhangli for awhile longer, until I got a new job and could afford a small studio or at least a better room in a shared apartment.

I probably would have dated a couple of guys, be they expat or local. Those relationships, as most tend to do, probably would not have worked out. Although I'm sociable, I'm not exactly an "every weekend at a different social hangout" girl, so there probably wouldn't have been more than one or two. I think that estimate is accurate because that's about half the number of guys I typically dated in a few years in the DC area.

My social circle wouldn't have been appreciably different, except it would lack some people, including one whom I consider to be a very good friend, because those friends came through opportunities brought about by Brendan.

So I probably would have a social life that involved seeing friends for one outing a weekend, occasionally going out on a weekend night if invited (I love making plans for meals or outings for friends, I make drink plans far less often and mostly go when invited). I would otherwise work, take pictures, go hiking occasionally, hang out at cafes and then come home and be alone. My expat male friends, few as they are, would be dating local women at either a far greater frequency or intensity than any dating opportunities I would have had.

Not too unlike my single life in DC, except I had more dating opportunities and, within my own cultural context, it was easier to make friends. I saw those friends more, because in the USA we seem to place a greater emphasis on time spent with friends vs. at home, with family or working than in Taiwan, where people seem to see friends less.

I would have looked at the expat scene in Taipei - nightlife that I'm mostly not interested in (with some exceptions! Going out occasionally is fun), maybe a few clubs I could have joined, but generally just as I see it now: something I dip my toe into and can enjoy, but never really felt I fit into (although I feel a bit more fitting-inny now that I am friends with a small group of younger married women like myself who also defy the young-guys-here-teaching-at-Hess-for-a-year and the older-family-types-with-kids-at-the-American-school, and I know a few student types - I tend to get on well with the grad school crowd). I would have concluded that, in part, I felt a bit out of it with the expat crowd. Not unwelcome, but a bit like "young single foreign women who aren't particularly pretty have a tougher time socially here than back home".

I'd have looked at local life in Taipei and probably dipped my toes into that more, as well, but likewise still not felt like I fit in: turns out people don't invite you out much when you don't fit into a circle of coworkers, classmates or family.

Then I would have looked back at my social life in DC, and then my dating life. I might not have chosen to move back to DC in particular, but I might have concluded that as a single woman, if I wanted a better shot at having good relationships and having one of those turn permanent, and if I wanted lots of friends to have good times with both in the interim and beyond, that my chances of that were far better back home, or in another country.

Perhaps I would have done the CELTA as I did in Istanbul, had the great fun that I did, made friends on the course, and decided that for a good social life, Istanbul would have been a great bet. And I might well have stayed, despite the fact that it would have left me a bit emotionally torn. Or I might have picked another Mediterranean country.

All through this I'd be a bit angry at myself, thinking what, are you not the nomad and adventurer you thought you were?  Are you really going to go home now because poor widdle Jenna doesn't have enough widdle fwiends and nobody wants to be her boyfwiend? Awww. I thought you were made of stronger stuff, and I thought you knew that traveling the world would come with its share of loneliness. Are you just another Typical Girl, who needs people around her instead of fortifying herself? Are you weak? Do you not have the balls you thought you did?


(I admit I have a mortal fear of being seen as weak. That's a good post for another time, if I ever feel like revealing that much about myself).

And of course the final few sentences of the above are ridiculous, and in their own way, sexist, but it's only honest of me to say I would have thought them.

And I would have felt conflicted and angry and a bit sad, but I probably would have also felt lonely and  lacking social and dating opportunities - even though they exist in Taipei, I would have found them, as a single foreign woman, insufficient - but in the end I probably would have moved on in my predicted 2-3 years.  The fact that I didn't, that I instead married and nested a bit and started to feel a bit settled (and happy about that, which I never thought would happen) and like Taipei was home. But a big part of that is that I do have a family here. I have a husband - and a cat and (for the time being) a sister. I might have never felt that way if the whole marriage thing hadn't happened, or if I had not at least found myself in a serious relationship.

I'll leave it at this: in 2003 I celebrated my birthday in Pakse, Laos. I was in my early twenties and in Laos by myself (not long before I'd seen off Brendan in Beijing, from where he returned to Korea). I spent my birthday alone,  hiking up the crumbled, rocky ruins of a temple carved into a bluff outside of town. It was humid and buggy and I'm sure I looked like hell. I'm also sure as hell that I didn't care. I got to the top and sat at the edge of the bluff, the craggy black building blocks of the temple tumbled down below me, mostly in a scraggy pile, but a few were strewn further out into the verdant landscape.

Nobody had yet sent me birthday wishes in e-mail and this was long before Facebook. My only birthday wish before the time difference made it my birthday on the East Coast was from myself. I was young and I didn't mind being alone. I looked out over the tops of palm trees to lush rice fields dotted with beasts of burden and I thought to myself: this is great - how often can one say that one climbed a ruined temple in Laos on their birthday?


But several years later when I hit Taipei,  this was what my "birthday alone" was like. It was not good. It was not adventurous. It was not ballsy. It was just sad.  I still wanted - and still want - to travel the world and have adventures, but what I realized was that I didn't necessarily want to do it alone.
                             

Qingshan Wang 2011

Every year around this time - based on the lunar calendar - 青山宮 (Qingshan Temple) on Guiyang Street holds its annual celebration. Other temples from around the area come to pay homage to Qingshan Wang (The Lord of Green Mountain), and Qingshan Wang himself makes a circuit of the other nearby temples. The festival usually spans three days, with the biggest processional taking place on the night of the final day. It typically ends between 11pm and 1am.

It's a favorite among campaigning politicians as many of Wanhua's residents turn out to see the festivities.

We try to go every year, which has not gone unnoticed. The day before yesterday our friend Joseph was there and managed to shake hands with a campaigning Tsai Ying-wen (蔡英文). I'm looking forward to his blog post with pictures on that. Some campaign assistant asked him "is this your first time to this festival?" and some local shot back "no, that guy comes every year". To be fair, Joseph kind of sticks out. The year previously, I was jockeying for a good position from which to see the parade and a guy stood in front of me. I complained and he said "we see you every few months at these temple parades. You always get the chance to take pictures, so I don't feel bad for you!"

This year was my favorite so far - we left at about midnight, and it was still going. The highlight of the night was the delegation from the Tiger Temple (虎爺宮) in Xinzhuang (新莊), which I now feel I must visit. People involved with the temple, male and female, wore tiger-striped jackets and yellow headbands, came in shouting "TIGER GRANDFATHER!" (虎爺), "ho ya" in Taiwanese. Apparently this deified tiger has the ability to control ghosts, demons and other celestial bad boys. They piled up firecrackers to about knee height, positioned the idol's palanquin over them and set off the pile. The palanquin looked quite worse for wear. So did the guys.

There were also techno-dancing "god children" (san tai zi), lion dancers, dragon dancers, idols, Eight Generals and the usual contingent of tall gods and short dancing gods (七爺八爺) who have their own story (they were two real-life generals from history who were such good friends that they were like brothers, so when they were trapped under a bridge during a flood, they stayed and drowned together rather than be separated).

I told the story of Qingshan Wang here, back in 2008, and have more posts on this particular festival here, here, and about Hao Lung-bin's appearance at the festival here.

Updated with photos!

"A Workman Must First Sharpen His Tools"

From the back side of an AIDS brochure with very low production values from about five years ago.

I don't know about the other weird idioms, but the last one (The "C" Episode) is a Confucian proverb - "Before he embarks on a task, a workman must first sharpen his tools if he is to do his work well".

Good job, Executive Yuan AIDS Prevention Committee, for using a Confucian proverb in completely the wrong setting and in such a giggle-inducing way!

Enjoy!

In Defense of Taipei

Here’s my question.

And I write this as someone one month away from leaving her old-skool back-lane neighborhood and becoming a Da’an yuppie.

What the hell is up with all these folks who live outside Taipei who somehow think that “their Taiwan” is more real, is better, is somehow qualitatively a step above Taipei? What is so bad or wrong about Taipei?

I know these folks like to think of it as an easy-peasy expat cocoon, where you never have to work to hard, study Chinese too much or get your feet wet. I know that that can be true: it’s certainly possible to set yourself up nicely in a foreigner enclave like Tianmu or even Shida/Gongguan and not have to try too hard. It’s easy to spend your weekends on Anhe Road and make only other foreign friends.

But just because one can do that doesn’t mean that one actually does. Taipei is a Taiwanese city just like any other, even if it lacks some of the, what’s the word, ineffable cultural qualities of cities elsewhere in the country. It’s only “warm and safe” for foreigners here if you seek that out. If you don’t, you can live a life that is not, to be honest, all that much different from someone living elsewhere – except the case could be made that there’s more to do, and not all of it is touristy.

Take a look at my soon-to-be-erstwhile neighborhood, Jingmei. (By the way, regarding my last post, Lao Wu’s not dead. I clearly misunderstood the old ladies, although I was certain they said ‘她過了’ so I’m not sure how). What have we got? One local coffeeshop that plays The Carpenters and serves Japanese curry. A night market. Old folks who hang out outside and gossip. A stinky tofu/thin oyster noodle vendor. A chicken coop where they’ll even kill the chicken for you. A-Xiong’s “everything” store. A few 7-11s. A Wellcome. A breakfast restaurant that turns into a betel nut stand after dark across from an 按摩店. Old ladies and Vietnamese domestic workers who collect recycling when the trash truck comes. Guys who own the breakfast/etel nut shop outside in wife beaters and 藍白拖 drinking all sorts of local liquor at all hours, who always say hello and often give me a shot of Gaoliang. My neighbors are Taiwanese – most of them prefer to speak Taiwanese or Hakka, in fact – and none of them speak English. Most are too old to have learned it in school and those who did have mostly forgotten. I have to speak Chinese and integrate into the neighborhood like everyone else. No helpful English, no special stores, no special help, no swanky cafes.

I have my old lady gang, just like any self-respecting wannabe-obasan should. I have my local friends. I have the people I see every day and greet. In Chinese, if not Taiwanese.

How is this any different from a neighborhood where I might live in, say, Yunlin or Miaoli or wherever? How is it any easier or any more foreigner-friendly?

Sure, I have more work opportunities. I couldn’t do what I do anywhere else except possibly Hsinchu: not even Kaohsiung has the demand for it. In fact I’ve been sent to Kaohsiung for seminars because there is a demand, just not enough to sustain much local English corporate training business. I can and do avail myself of public transportation: besides my own driving limitations (I really don’t drive – I mean I know how, and I have a license, but I have very little experience and I’m not that good at it), I really feel that public transit is superior to private. It’s better for the environment and it’s more social.

It saddens me that Taiwan is not investing enough in both building and encouraging the use of public transportation. This does not make a Taipei-based expat inferior: I’d argue that it makes them more environmentally attuned. Yay for MRTs, boo for gas guzzlers and polluting scooters.

Yes, I can take that MRT to swankier bars – although compared to Istanbul, Taipei’s nightlife kind of sucks – and nice cafes, and I have more choice than elsewhere on the island, but an expat based in a Kaohsiung, Taizhong or Hsinchu can go to similar foreigner-friendly places. Sure, they don’t have Carnegie’s, but I don’t go to Carnegie’s. At most of my favorite spots - including Shake House and La Boheme, my two favorites – the beer is good but English is barely spoken.

Again, how does this make my life easier, less authentic or less “really in Taiwan” than if I were to live elsewhere?

Honestly, ride a bike through the lanes, talk to the shopkeepers and old folks outside socializing (a perennial favorite of mine). Go to the 100-kuai beer and seafood joints – I was quoted regarding them in the South China Morning Post not long ago, unfortunately the article is no longer online – go to Dihua Street or just wander Wanhua, Dadaocheng or Dalongdong. Go to Bao’an Temple (my personal favorite).

How is any of that not the real Taiwan? These are the places where I tend to hang out (what can I say, I like old urban stuff), and I can guarantee that by doing so, my life is not easier, more cosseted or more cocooned than someone living outside Taipei. I am not superior (although I am more environmentally friendly with no wheels!), but I am not inferior, either, and I’m sick of hearing it. I’m sorry, but Taipei is just as good as whatever town y’all live in, and it is not necessarily any easier to live here. It’s only easier if you let it be.

Finally, most of my local friends in Taipei are not from Taipei – with a few notable exceptions (I do have one friend who waxes rhapsodic on how he and his grandmother would go for oyster omelets by 圓環 in the ‘70s). They’re from Kaohsiung County, Nantou, Miaoli…they weren’t born here, but they’d balk at the idea that – while plenty of southerners call Taipei “台北國” – it’s not just as much “Taiwan” as any other part of Taiwan.

Taipei, Percolating

We arrived back in Taipei late last night.

I've taken long vacations before - up to six weeks - but this is the first time I've spent more than two months (nine weeks) away since I moved to Taipei five years ago. On all of these trips, but this one more than most, the taxi ride back to our apartment from Taipei Main (we could take the MRT but we usually don't when we have lots of bags) has been a mostly familiar but also slightly disorienting experience.

I always seem to forget while I'm away that the architecture of Taipei takes some getting used to. I love this city and in many ways think it's beautiful (as one friend put it, "it has a patina"), but that is not an immediate reaction: that's a view cultivated over time, as the aesthetics of Taipei percolate and settle in my brain like so much dark coffee. Let's face it: while plenty of buildings in Taipei have distinct and compelling facades - from the turn-of-the-century shophouses to the whalebone-ribbed and color-tiled mid-century mid-rises - many are not so visually arresting. I'm talking concrete or white tile buildings, buildings that, rather than having a lovely "patina", really just could use a good scrubbing, featureless buildings with backlit neon signs and chock-a-block street-level shops along mangled sidewalks.

It's when these monstrosities settle in your brain and you stop looking at them that you adjust to Taipei and see other things - a charming black-and-white church on Chang-an Road or the '60s funktacular post office jutting into view along the highway to Linkou, views down busy roads on the brown line MRT, street food vendors cooking up all manner of greasy treats, a Japanese era corner house-turned-coffeeshop on Zhongshan Road, inviting restaurants, little parks, derelict Japanese wooden houses and the old shophouse outlines of renovated buildings still in use.

That's not what I see when I come back to Taipei after a long trip, though. After banishing the concrete monstrosities to the back of my consciousness, they hurtle back into full view after time away. They whiz by, advertising chain boutiques I don't shop in, scooter repair, 7-11, plumbing and electrician services, restaurants. Above float darkened, barred windows stamped with hideous conformity into dark gray hulks. I'll say it: the taxi ride back was ugly, like U-G-L-Y, you ain't got no alibi, you UGLY ugly. After renting a garden apartment in a charming rowhouse in Istanbul for a month, the six flights (six flights!) of cement stairs and peeling paint back to our apartment in Jingmei were ugly. I'd forgotten how ugly the kitchen is, and the view from it has never spectacular (although I've grown quite fond of the neon cross from the nearby church that glows red at night. You don't have to be Christian to appreciate Christian camp).

I feel it's been made worse this time due to the length of time we've been gone, the extended period of time we spent in Istanbul, which is generally more attractive, and the fact that living in Istanbul even for a short period and taking a class there has changed me and my perception of the world more deeply than one of our usual trips would.

Oh well. This only reinforces my desire to move into a newer, nicer apartment, and I'll stop actively noticing the horrible architecture soon. All of the things that are attractive about Taipei will come back into focus in time. Tonight I'll probably seek out one of my favorite haunts in Gongguan, if I'm not too jet-lagged, pour myself a classy beer and look out on the pretty-ish lanes around Wenzhou Street, and it'll come back.

Occupy Taipei!

Occupy Taipei is coming on Saturday!

I won't be there - I'll be somewhere in Massachussetts between my parents' house and my in-laws', but I wish I could be there.

On the bright side, I'll be in New York twice next week and hope to get the chance to stop by Wall Street, stand around and shout socialist slogans, because I really do believe in what Occupy Wall Street is trying to do - even if the media doesn't seem to understand it.

It's no secret that I teach in a lot of financial institutions - the whole gamut of that industry, not just banks. A lot of my students and some of my friends work in Xinyi near where Occupy Taipei will take place, and work for the institutions that the protesters are decrying as aiding the "1%" and taking money from us 99%. I justify this by reminding myself that the economic structure of Taiwan is not the same as that of the USA. Pay disparities between the normal and the very rich aren't as pronounced. It's not as wealthy a country in absolute terms (even if it has a PPP higher than that of Japan, meaning that the average Taiwanese enjoys a higher standard of living than a similarly positioned Japanese person). Americans are being crushed by student debt - an issue most Taiwanese don't face: rare is the Taiwanese student who pays his or her own way at a private institution, and the public universities, widely acknowledged to provide a better education, are affordable. Americans are being crushed by housing debt: while the real estate market in Taipei City is facing some major problems and massive price inflation, the issue is more that new buyers and families needing to expand can't afford to live in Taipei City - it's not people who bought McMansions and can't meet their mortgages (or regular folks who bought modest houses and still can't afford them due to layoffs or structural problems in the economy). I don't see Taiwanese crushed by medical debt or health care they can't afford: the excellent NHI system takes care of that for the most part.

The issues I see in Taiwan are different: new graduates and entry-level workers are ridiculously underpaid. I'm sorry, but in Taipei especially, for the hours they put in, $25,000-$30,000 NT a month is simply not acceptable. I wouldn't work so hard for such little pay, and I wish there would be a grassroots change, spearheaded by the young, who refuse to work so much for so little. I see new graduates who can't get a job (which, come to think of it, is just like the USA) because their qualifications are nothing special. I see management that honestly and truly does not care about employee well-being and work-life balance, no matter the age, seniority or level of the employee. I see them willing to let valuable employees go rather than pay them fairly or ask them to work reasonable hours (the worst of this is in the accounting industry - don't even ask the hours that an auditor, especially one in their first two years of work, has to put in. It's criminal.)

I see a country where people use tradition as a reason why young people live with parents well into their twenties or even thirties, while everyone ignores the truth: this generation doesn't live at home entirely because they want to (although some surely want to), or because their parents won't hear of them living on their own if they're unmarried (although some parents surely do insist on this, and some children do capitulate). They live with their parents because they have to: they don't get paid enough to get their own accommodation.

I see a country where there is still workplace gender discrimination - although it's much better than the rest of Asia and continuing to improve - and couples are choosing not to have children because a.) they can't afford it or b.) the wife doesn't want to be the one pressured to give up her career or take on more than she can handle. I see a system where childcare, if you don't have parents close by who can watch your child, is just as unaffordable as in the USA.

That is why I'd have liked to join Occupy Taipei (with apologies, but also no shame, to my friends in finance). That's why I regret that I won't be in Taipei for it. That's why I hope it takes hold and is still going on when I come back. I may work with many businesses, but that doesn't mean I don't see the problems therein.

The Various Kinds of Me

So our course is finally (finally!) done and I'll have more time for blogging from now on. I have a lot to say about Turkey but I might wait a few days until we're in Maine and have some time to relax to write up my thoughts on our time there. I still feel more attached to Taipei, but a month in Istanbul with an honest-to-goodness apartment, social life (everyone on our course got along extremely well - the chemistry was just phenomenal and we went out for lunches and every weekend), routine, dinners at home and neighbors who recognized us...well, that made me feel like a part of me has experienced Istanbul expat life, too.

I really adored it - Istanbul is an awesome city. Gorgeous and varied architecture, from Byzantine churches to grand mosques to 18th and 19th century European grandeur to touches of Oriental Express Art Nouveau to pre-war rowhouses to modern concoctions. Phenomenal food is everywhere, as well as fantastic shopping. Hills which are hell to climb but afford dazzling views. Friendly people, lots of street cats that are clean and well-fed (but not owned by anybody). All that is topped off with a nightlife that puts both DC and Taipei to shame - it's on par with New York but in some ways better - there is an entire neighborhood (Beyoglu around Istiklal Caddesi) on the Golden Horn that goes nuclear at sundown, with seemingly infinite choices for bars, dancing, cafes and food. Not even New York has something like that (although some places light up more than others). Let's just say that we partook generously of it - which is a lot more fun when there are ten of you and everyone needs to blow off some stress. I would totally stay - even live - in Istanbul again.

Now we're "home" - or at least on our way. Yesterday afternoon we landed at JFK and met my parents, spending the night before heading back to the airport (where we are now) to visit B's parents in Maine.

Being home, even for just an overnight - we return to my parents' next week - has made me think about who I am in Taipei, who I was in Istanbul and who I am in the USA. The Jenna who ate her mom's eggs, bacon and blueberry muffins this morning and helped putter around the kitchen she knows so well, who cuddled the two cats and took a lovely post-flight bath in the huge upstairs bathtub is basically an adult - and much more mature - version of the Jenna who last lived in that house in high school. The Jenna who lives in Taipei sometimes feels like a woman who experienced entirely different formative years than she did. You wouldn't have expected that Jenna to have grown up in a small town, and she's really nothing like the dorktacular girl that went to high school in that same town.

The first Jenna is the one who was always a little eccentric but is ticking all the right boxes as she grows older. It's the one who had a big, local, family wedding to a beloved-by-parents guy. It's the one who knows how to build a hearth fire and which apples are the best to pick, who knows a lot about LL Bean winter gear and is no stranger to chasing deer off the lawn. It's the one that would have probably made a really good school teacher or office worker and wouldn't have traveled that much outside Western Europe, and would probably own a house and car now.

The second one is more than a little eccentric without actually being insane. She's the one who had a big but non-traditional wedding in a crazy fuchsia dress to an awesome, adventuresome guy who also travels the world. It's the one who knows her way around an urban jungle and can tell you where to find the best siphon coffee bar, who knows how to bargain in a foreign bazaar and is no stranger to the realities of city life or how things (generally) work in foreign countries. It's the one who will never work in a public school (teachers deserve more support and higher salaries than what they earn in that system - and I deserve better, as well) and couldn't stand office life. It's the one who regularly gives her parents heart palpitations with her travel choices...and may never own a house or car (although an urban or semi-urban townhouse someday is not out of the question).

The first one is familiar with the way the light hits the Hudson River in the morning and lives near New York City without actually visiting it often. The second can tell you what it smells like as you bike along the trail from Jingmei to Zheng-da and stops in New York whenever she can. The first speaks French. The second forgot most of her French and speaks Chinese.

It's hard to explain, and harder still to draw a clear line, but it's there - Taipei Jenna isn't quite the same as Hometown Jenna. Neither were the same as DC Jenna - that one dated a few inappropriate guys, had a lot of friends but not a raging social life, worked in a cubicle and had a lot of growing up to do, and went out on the weekends to nightspots she didn't even like all that much. And of course there was Guizhou Jenna and India Jenna, and more recently, Istanbul Jenna.

They're all different women, and that's not just the result of growth and the passing of time. Their different facets come out not just as I grow, but as I live in different places. When I come home, the old me comes out a little more (ever heard the old story about how when you're around your parents, you revert to a lot of your childhood behaviors and ways of dealing with them despite the fact that you're all adults?), and the me who lives in Taipei recedes a bit.

Everyone is influenced by where they are and the places where they live or visit - not even necessarily for a long time. A week in Bangladesh could very well blow the mind of a lot of people I know (it certainly blew mine). I do think that expat life magnifies and deepens that. When you live in another country, especially one with a wildly different set of cultural norms, you absorb more of that place and change as a result. I have felt for years that my study abroad time in India is what knocked the Hometown Jenna's pinball down a wildly different course. She's the reason why Guizhou Jenna and Taipei Jenna got the chance to exist. Taipei Jenna made Istanbul Jenna possible. This is hardly a Nobel-worthy insight, but it's one I'm writing about now because my visit home made me more aware of it.

I quite liked Istanbul Jenna, though. She was a hard worker with a lot of friends who knew how to party. I hope she sticks around for a bit in Taipei!

Updated Post: The Best Pizza in Taipei

Updated:

I just added Fifteen to my list of the best pizza in Taipei. Enjoy!

Lao Ren Cha's Ultimate Taipei DIY Shop Guide

I bought just about everything to make this necklace from a small bead-and-fixing shop in a lane east of Dihua Street - the crystals, tiny turquoise beads and lapis beads came from Taipei City Mall.

So, I’ve been slowly working on a post about navigating circles of friendship in Taiwan, but I’m not feeling like finishing it right now (maybe over the weekend). It’s hard, writing it in such a way to make it clear that I am observing, not complaining, and that I am in no way talking about anyone specific, just citing trends I’ve noticed. I’m having trouble creating a tone that conveys that, so it’s on the shelf for now.

Instead, I’ll do another, easier post I’ve been meaning to cover for awhile – the best places to get DIY products in Taipei. Many of you know that I’m totally into DIY jewelry making; I do other stuff too, but mostly stick to jewelry (I mostly branched out when it came to making stuff for our wedding, because for every piece of cookie-cutter whatever-whatever I found online, I figured I could make one more to my taste – from boutonnieres to corsages to seating cards to table numbers to bridesmaid jewelry to my own jewelry).

The hair stick came from a shop in the underground mall on Zhongxiao between Main Station and Chongqing Road. The leaf came from the shop near Yanping-Chang'an, the rest came from the small shop near Dihua Street.

I usually get my beads at a small shop in a lane just east of Dihua Street (I can’t find the exact address – the first lane, which I believe is a small street – just east of Yongle Market and walk north just a bit. On the right you’ll pass a lane that houses a small wet market, and where you want to go is the next lane north of that - turn in and it’s about halfway down on the left, across from a shop that sells fringes and ribbons).

The shop also sells real stone beads – if you are willing to get spendy they are behind the counter, and some of the cultured pearls can get expensive. Some strands are more expensive than in Taipei City Mall, so you may want to look there first. Some things I really like here are the large selection of copper-tone beads and workings, the metal-dipped colored glass and the Venetian-glass style beads.

This lane is also great for ribbon lace of all kinds as well as ribbon – the ribbon shop is the best of its lot.

Pretty much all of this except for the lighter amethysts came from the small shop near Dihua Street (the amethysts came from Taipei City Mall, as did the amethyst pendant at the end)

I also get my workings at this shop: the metal bits that hold it all together, such as clasps, jump beads, wires, rods and earring hooks. They also have a good selection of chains and charms including faux keys and you can buy pliers here. I have a pair of needlenose and a pair of fatter, heavier pliers.

For fabric and buttons, I go to Yongle Market. Get your fabric on the 2^nd floor, but the button mecca is a small shop on the far south end of the first floor, near the entrance that’s just beyond the outdoor coffee shop and lets out into the lane with the food stalls. For Indian fabric and Thai silk, go to the shop on the 2^nd floor of the building with the watch store on the southwest corner of Yanping-Nanjing. Just buzz up if the door is locked.

The whole lot of this came from Yongle Market, either the far side shop on the ground floor or the shop with all the sparkly fabric on the 2nd floor. The copper thing came from the small shop near Dihua.

On the other end of the market, near the street just east of Dihua, the first floor houses the go-to shop for feathers. You can get feathers elsewhere (including inside the market itself just inside the main 2^nd floor entrance).

On Dihua itself across the street from Yongle Market you’ll find a shop that sells more beads and other accessories – this is a good place for sew-on patches (they have Chinese dragon patches, which is cool).

Whatever I can’t find here I get in the Yanping-Chang’an area. Just west of Yanping-Chang’an intersection on the north side is a DIY shop that is not as cramped as my favorite one, but is also not that well-organized.

If you head east on Chang’an, Chang’an-Chongqing has a great fake flower and basket shop, for those who are into that sort of thing.

Heading south on Yanping, you’ll pass a DIY shop that has plastic beads (not my thing), lots of yarn and other stuff. I generally walk all the way to Civic Boulevard – on the Yanping-Civic Intersection you’ll find a large shop full of bead, mostly crystals. This is a good place for fake jade if you are looking to make something of that sort. Lots of bracelets that you can cut, take the beads off of, and turn into whatever you want.

Some of these charms are old broken earrings (the bottom one), or I've had for years and didn't know what to do with them (the glass one). The lapis one came from Taipei City Mall, and the Venetian-glass-style beads came from the small shop near Dihua.

Taipei City Mall is also a great place for beads and especially crystals. I can’t even say which shop as the whole thing is so vast and difficult to navigate in terms of remembering what stores are where. I particularly like one shop that sells affordable faux turquoise, real (but low-quality) lapis, real amethysts and interesting charms and pendants. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you just where it is – I believe it’s toward the eastern end and in the southern corridor (there are two corridors separated by more shops), if coming from Taipei Main it’d be on the left. This entire area is the bargain-basement mecca for crystals and real-but-not-stellar-quality stones.

Ribbon: ribbon shops in the lanes around Dihua. Fixings: my favorite shop. Leaf skeletons: Jianguo Weekend Flower Market.

I get my leaf skeletons at Jianguo Weekend Flower Market – the Flower Market is a great place for this and other dried or fake flower DIY stuff, and the jade market, as long as you are careful not to get ripped off, is great for fake jade (don’t even try to buy real jade here) and antique-looking Chinese beads and charms (some might even be real antiques, but don’t bet on it).

This is what I made with the paper I got at Chang-chun Ever Prosperous Co.

I get my paper at Chang-Chun Ever Prosperous Co. paper shop, near Chang’an-Songjiang Intersection (on Chang’an, south side, just east of Songjiang, past Su Ho Paper Museum which also has a nice shop). They sell almost everything you might need at good prices, including Japanese chiyogami paper.

I get all my other stuff – hot glue, regular glue, gold paint and paint pens, cutting implements, ink, paint, brushes, rods etc. around Shi-da – the huge stationery store next to Watson’s in the night market is one good place, and the art shops on the south end of Heping in this area are also great, especially for paint and spray paint. For hot glue, the “everything” shop next to the stationery store can help. Further east, Sheng Li’s 2^nd floor (the huge green store on Heping-Fuxing) has a lot of stuff, too, including more leaf skeletons, ribbon, string, paint etc. and gift boxes and bags.

Very occasionally I need sequins or glitter – I like to peruse the more unique offerings at the Hess Bookstore (B1 level) on Minquan/Songjiang. They also have a good selection of fancy gift boxes.

Anyway. I hope this fairly extensive list helps out another fellow DIYer in Taipei who is searching for the perfect beads or needs something weird like leaf skeletons or gold spray paint. Enjoy!

Taipei, the sepia and blue edition

Taken from my bedroom window soon after moving to Taipei

I’ve written before about how much I love living in Taiwan, how I feel that I’m fairly high-functioning in society here, how I’m comfortable just being around, speaking the local language(s) and, hey, sometimes I even forget that I’m a foreigner if those around me don’t treat me like one.

What I haven’t written about much is how hard it was to get my act together when I first arrived. Months ago we jumped all over Lindsay Craig’s “article” (I still hesitate to call it journalism in any sense) on how she fancied herself a world traveler, tried living in Taiwan and after seven months she realized she couldn’t do it, packed up and went home.
I was one of those on the side of “c’mon, it’s not that hard, if anything Taiwan is one of the easiest non-Western countries to live in” – and I still believe that’s true. My opinion that Taiwan is a great place to live, and fairly easy to settle into, has not changed.

That opinion, however, was hard-won, which is something I don’t often talk about. So let me tell you a story.

I moved to Taiwan at the beginning of September in 2006. I was living in a shared apartment with three other teachers, who were all pretty good guys but not people I’d likely become good friends with – I knew that from the first day. We simply had nothing in common. The same held true at work: a few people I really didn’t like, a few that I thought were OK, nobody I could envision becoming true friends with. I hadn’t found any alternate venue for making friends yet.

My birthday is in mid-September – a little over fifteen days after I unpacked my things in Taipei. I had known when I bought the plane ticket that I probably wouldn’t have made many social connections yet, but I celebrated my birthday alone in Laos years before and it was fine; I figured it’d be like it was then. A day alone for me, exploring temples or taking a walk before settling in for a nice cup of coffee with my sketch pad. One of my roommates shared my birthday – same year, and only a few hours difference, in fact – and was going to Taroko Gorge for the day with his new Taiwanese girlfriend. I had no such grand plans.
The days alternated between oppressive and unbearably hot, punctuated with sudden and hellish downpours. So, you know, typical Taipei weather for late summer. I’d lived in India – lived through a monsoon in fact – and was handling it alright.
My birthday, however, was a sky-destroying clamor of rain. Bleak and saturated, I couldn’t see from my window – emblazoned for some reason with a sticker that said “SUPER” – across the lane to the sooty cement building across the way.
Super. Just super.

I felt a bit sick. Despite being used to heat and rain, I couldn’t get used to the heat and rain. My bed smelled a bit musty. The air conditioner buzzed over my head, spilling down cold air that made me cough. The floor was gritty even though I’d just swept it. The balcony had a Coke can full of cigarette butts in it – the guys had been using the balcony to smoke again, something I’d said was fine even though I can’t stand the smell of smoke, figuring it’d stay outside. It mostly did, but damn it to hell, that stupid can was so ugly. On that dirty, cracked plastic table. I hated that table. I hated the apartment – with an endless stream of young foreign teachers coming in and out, nobody bothered to seriously clean and by now the bulging detritus behind the couch had become institutional. It looked like if you touched it you’d get slime on your fingers. The only decorations were Taiwan Beer labels soaked off of bottles and stuck onto the sliding glass of the shelving, which stored more unidentifiable ghosts of teachers past.

I thought I would be fine, but I was absolutely not. I had left the USA thinking my Chinese was better than it actually was, it had been years since I’d dealt with this kind of weather and needed time to adjust – time I had not allowed in my psyche – I had thought I would have at least made superficial “meat and liquor friends” (酒肉朋友) by now, but I had not. Taipei can be a lovely city, but I hadn’t discovered the best things about it yet: I thought the National Palace Museum and the top of Taipei 101 were the height of the city’s attractions. I’d re-injured my back in Japan and it ached. I didn’t particularly like my job and the pay was a joke. I was seriously running low on savings. I didn’t realize it yet, but I was suffering from a kind of “not culture shocked enough” culture shock: I had prepared myself mentally for a challenge on the scale of China. Like many foreigners who have never visited Taiwan, I assumed they were roughly similar, with Taiwan merely being somewhat more developed. I had expected a hard-nosed fight to get myself settled, but one never materialized. As such, I couldn’t get settled.

There was only one good thing going for me – I was recently out of a relationship and not interested in dating generally. I was lonely on the social front but not on the romantic one.

I looked out the window and saw only rain. I looked around the room and saw only dust – and the shell of a dead beetle. I looked around and saw no friends. I suppose I could have invited some not-really-and-never-going-to-be-friends people along, but that felt, honestly, even sadder.

So I laid on my musty bed with the heinous blue-and-yellow poly-blend comforter and cried deep into the pillow.
Then, as I’m not the sort to do wallow for very long – my lowest moods tend to come and go like plum rains, very intense when the sky breaks but clearing up fairly quickly – I decided that I had to do something on my birthday even if it wasn’t perfect, or even all that great.

So I got up and dusted myself off – this wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t had to literally dust myself off – and grabbed my guidebook to find an Indian restaurant. If I was going to have a craptacular pouring birthday with no friends, I would at least have Indian food!

I didn’t know how to navigate the buses yet and took the MRT, transferring twice to Zhongshan Jr. High School station (now I’d just take the 74, 642 or 643). The only Indian restaurant in the book was called Hindoostan, which didn’t sound promising, but it was something and at least I could get some restorative spices in my gut to work their spicy magic.

The ceiling was decorated with Christmas ornaments (?!), the atmosphere was bland and the food, while spicy, had the slightly turgid aura of pre-cooked and microwaved food – the spices were Indian, but otherwise it was equivalent in quality to 7-11 Japanese curry over rice. Fatty mutton chunks swam sadly in oil-slicked rogan josh paste, samosas deflated softly where they should have been slightly crispy, and the gulab jamun was from a can. Around me, diners ate in groups – some of them Indian, which surprised me, because no Indian I know would eat this food twice – only I consumed my repast alone, shoulders hunched slightly over the table, as though I were trying to keep out the driving rain.

I walked back to the MRT, as deflated as a microwaved samosa, and climbed back on the brown line as dejected as I’d been when I I’d ridden it earlier. The rain started up again, and as I flew over Fuxing Road, I looked down at the streets winding away toward other parts of the city. Full of cars, full of people fighting with their umbrellas and sidestepping puddles. Full of people going about their lives, going to see friends or family, going home and enjoying their loved ones. I am sure plenty of them were not so lucky and as I looked out over Nanjing East Road, crammed with the red rear lights of cars, that some of those drivers were winding their way back to an equally lonely home, but at least they were from here, they lived here, they had a life here and they could at the very least speak the language in more than broken bits. From my fast-moving perch, the streets below were ribbons of urban life, and I was not a part of them.

The windows of the brown line were rippled with rain, the city lights creating undulating colors and blurring the scene. I was not crying outwardly now, but I may as well have been. The slashes of water obscuring my view made me see the world as though I was.

I remember thinking – I wish I had friends here. Not nameless, faceless hypothetical friends, but my friends. If I could have any one of them here, which would I pick? Brendan – immediately Brendan (which was not the first clue that he was the person I should be with).

Soon after that, I did begin to form friendships. I met my good friend Becca and through her, Roy and Cherry. I befriended Ray and Cara – some students of mine – and spent Christmas in Lishan with Cara. My friend Julian visited me, as did Brendan (who, as you know, later moved here). I attended a few parties and expat gatherings. I found a new job after my first year contract was up at Kojen – I really couldn’t stand the idea of staying there for even one more year even though I wanted to stay in Taipei – discovered many of Taipei’s hidden gems, enjoyed occasional good weather, moved out of that dismal apartment, made friends and watched a relationship blossom into marriage.

Things did get better – a lot better! – but I can’t deny it, those first few months in Taipei were wretched. Had I been a weaker person, I probably would have packed up and gone home. Today, I’m glad I stuck it out: I want to try and live in other places at some point, but it can’t be denied – it’s hard to imagine leaving Taipei. I love this place.

Only blue skies from now on?

My Taipei

I'm a bit more than halfway through that viral "30 Day Song Challenge" on Facebook, and this song (by Taipei indie band Touming Magazine) was not on YouTube to post as a chosen song.

So...I made a video! And seeing as it's a Taipei-based band, I decided to make the video all photos from five years in Taipei.

Many of them are not good photos in the technical sense but I like to think they are all at least interesting and well-composed enough (and I can forgive technical flaws in anyone's work, including my own, if the photo itself is interesting. A technically good but boring photo is a far worse crime).

Either way, great or not, they're my pictures so they showcase my unique view of Taipei and my perspective on the city over the last five years (on this, the cusp of my fifth devastatingly sweltering Taiwan summer, I have been reflecting inordinately much on my time in Taiwan so far).

Will make another of Taiwan on the whole soon.

Enjoy!

iPhone Photo Day II on Lao Ren Cha!

What I want to know is who throws a hot dog, complete with ketchup, into the toilet.

Someone put sunglasses on her dog and took him to Da'an Park.

A sculpture near the SOGO in Tianmu. For serious. What were they thinking?

What's funny about this - if I have to tell you - is that "big brother octopus" is "predicting" that it is dangerous to park or drive your car on train tracks.

I really needed an octopus to tell me that.

I love this building. I can't figure out where it is, but I can see it from the HQ of one company I teach at near Raohe Night Market - from the mountains, it seems to be north of Bade Road. Someday I'll set out on foot to try and get a better photo. From the 1950s tailfin balconies to the color scheme to the weird cement artsy touches, I just adore it. I'd want to live there if it were nearer the MRT.

I wonder what we'll see from this up-and-coming young political star, Mayor Chen! (found in a used bookstore).

Baby Panda Tumor Go!

Taipei Graffiti

加油！Graffiti extolling the virtues of both being awesome and reggae music. I didn't know there were Rastafarians (or Rastafarian wannabes) in Taipei.

If you ride the Taipei MRT with any frequency, you're certain to come across backlit billboards on station platforms or mezzanines that have a big "slash" sign through some ugly amateur graffiti and the phrase "Graffiti is bad for the city's image".

I suppose for the ugly kid-with-one-spray-can-and-no-talent-writing-his-name graffiti, I'd agree, but I have to admit, there is some guerrilla street art (as I like to call graffiti) that is done with an artist's precision and knack for size, form and color.

While I'd be fine with doing away with the scrawled signatures in black or white spray paint, it would be a shame to group these vibrant works with run of the mill tags, and an even bigger shame to whitewash them.

I find that well-done graffiti, which many American cities are starting to embrace and even fund (for real graffiti artists) as a form of beautification, doesn't hurt the city's image - it colorizes it. Kaohsiung has started to allow mural-style wall art at Pier 2, and I do think that the Taipei government quietly tolerates the artistic graffiti along the bike trails.

I'd like to see Taipei throw its graying cement and tile arms around the idea of graffiti - we might get some really cool stuff going on, like this building - which was once clearly quite ugly - on Wooster Street in New York:

...and I honestly think that could improve how much of Taipei looks. Sure, we might get some political graffiti as one can find all over Central America:

Bus stop graffiti in Nicaragua urging people to re-elect Sandinista president Daniel Ortega.

...but that might not be the end of the world. It might get the Taiwanese youth more politically engaged, if anything.

I support any kind of artistic talent, whether it's on metal pull-down doors...

...or it's along the walls that separate the riverside bike trails from the rest of the city.

I have noticed that while Central America goes for political messages and the USA is concerned partially with art and partially with tagging and gang politics (something I absolutely do not support - I'm about art, not hate), Taipei graffiti tends to be picture-oriented - sometimes with an almost existential feel like the above, or sometimes with a clearly anime/modern Japanese aesthetics bent, as below:

I'm a fan of the anime-influenced guerrilla street art, in particular - it lends Taipei graffiti its own ineffable quality (I don't think I've ever seen graffiti in Japan, so generally you'd see it here, not there) and brings out the more "yes, we are in Asia, we're not just imitating New York" aspects of the art.

And you know, if someone with one spray can and no talent wants to write something worth reading ("Ming-de wuz here" need not apply) that makes you smile, not cringe, well, I'm all for that, too.

Awwww.

Another thing I'd like to see? More graffiti in Chinese (or Taiwanese) - you see a lot of scrawlings in English, but rarely do you come across big, colorful Chinese characters saying something interesting. Heck, even if they don't say anything interesting, I do think that graffiti'd Chinese would be cool - think about it, a language associated with delicate calligraphy and Confucius bending over a book millenia ago, all associated with erudition and rarefied precision, now used as modern and often illegal street art in a different and fascinating sort of contemporary public calligraphy. The youth of Taiwan, taking over this whole "ancient inheritance of Chinese characters" and using them for their own artistic purposes. I've never thought of Chinese characters as something indie or individualistic, but they could be in this context.

That would blow my mind. That would kill. At the risk of sounding too "naughts", that would pwn. Or own. Or whatever the young'ins are saying these days.

Finally, I'm not sure this counts as "graffiti" per se, but it is a kind of art and it probably was not sanctioned - in my book, it counts, and it's super cool.

Bonus points if you can identify where in Taipei I took this picture:

So as far as I see it, long live Taipei Graffiti! Bring on the bug-eyed anime creatures.